Our 1st Christmas as a Family of Four

After getting home from Christmas Eve dinner at my Grandma’s, Tim insisted on taking us through Candy Cane Lane in Seattle. We fed Kaydriana candy to keep her awake, but 40+ minutes into our crawl, we decided to abandon that idea.

We got home a bit later than I would have liked since we still had stockings to do and to set out cookies for Santa. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as getting the kids out of the car and into bed. Kaydriana had this nasty chesty cough and when I got her out of the truck and woke her up, she started choking/coughing. So I did what my mom used to do and brought her into the bathroom with me and turned on the hot water. She kept crying, “I don’t want to, I don’t want to”. She thought I was going to give her a bath. Poor thing!

After we get her to bed and Lake to bed, Tim and I did the last minute Santa things and got into bed ourselves.

Both kids ended up waking up in the middle of the night, but I was able to get them both settled down quickly. At about 6 AM, both Tim and I woke up… no kid alarms. We laid in bed thinking we should go back to sleep… but we just waited until one of the kids woke up. First was Lake. I brought him into bed and fed him and then we waited for Kaydriana. When we got tired of waiting, we decided to go downstairs and wake her up. I video taped her, hoping to capture her excitement, but you could tell she just wasn’t herself. It took her a while to get downstairs as she was pretty groggy. She was happy to open gifts and has become very proficient in it! Lakey didn’t know what to do. He enjoyed the wrapping paper and kept trying to get over to his sister’s gifts.

Lakes favorite gifts were his giggle pet thing and his loud, sing song, bright thing daddy got him. Kaydriana’s favorites were Lake’s loud, sing song, bright thing and her camera. She was taking pictures of everything! She even copied me when I set the timer on my camera to take a family picture. So we had to pretend she was taking a family picture with her camera J

We then spent the rest of the day at Tim’s parent’s house. Lake was not his usual self either. Typically, he is very content and can play and entertain himself. He needed to be held and played with and had the hardest time going down for a nap. It certainly was not a relaxing day.

I guess I expected this magical day with a lot of joy and merriment. It wasn’t. It wasn’t a bad day by any means and I loved that between Christmas Eve and Christmas day we had a lot of family time. But, I went to bed feeling like something was missing. I guess my expectations were too high?

The only other idea I had was that to me, Christmas is more than just a day. It’s a season.

And being over worked and under slept (that’s an acceptable term, right? :) ) I just couldn’t get into the spirit of the season. My goal for next year is to not be in the same department/position I am in now. I want the time and the energy to enjoy the holidays. I deserve that and so does my family.

Tim sent me this very sweet email last night while he was at work:

I want to say how great it was to be as a family with our 2 kids and you on Christmas it feels good to be with our family in the morning, the wife I love and the kids, we may not think the same way but my love will never fail. Love you more today then I have ever. Your husband for life, love you

So I guess I’ll end my blog entry with this: I know I have much to feel blessed about. We’re healthy (present colds excluded), we’ve got jobs, a roof over our head, food in the fridge and lots of family and friends. God is good.

12/28 Update- I wrote my entry yesterday (the 27^th), but wasn’t able to post it until today. During my one on one with my GM, she said she will be putting in a request for me to have time off leading up to Christmas. She said I deserve to enjoy the holidays while I have a young family. Then, my director came up and my GM mentioned it to her and she said it sounded like a reasonable request. Ummm… THANK YOU GOD!! :)